There are a wide variety of different types of baled agricultural material. For instance, such material can include cotton, hay, and plant biomass material, among a wide variety of others. Some examples of baled plant biomass material include corn stalks, sugarcane residue, switchgrass, etc.
Agricultural balers can be configured to form bales with a variety of different form factors (different sizes and shapes). For example, some balers create square or rectangular bales and other balers create cylindrical bales.
Typically, a baler has pickup and conveying mechanisms for collecting the agricultural material from the ground and conveying it into a bale forming chamber, such as a compression chamber. Then, once formed, the bale is released onto the ground for subsequent pickup by another machine. During these operations, the baler may become plugged. Rectifying a plugged baler is time consuming and can be labor-intensive (i.e., the operator is required to stop the baling operation to remove the plugged material which reduces the overall baling rate (hectares/hour)).
Also, depending on the terrain, placement of a released bale can be troublesome. For instance, in the case of cylindrical bales, depositing the bale on a slope can result in the bale rolling down the slope. Not only can retrieval of such a bale be time consuming in requiring the pickup machine to travel further to retrieve the bale, but the rolling bale can result in significant damage to structures or equipment, and/or severe injury to humans or livestock.
The discussion above is merely provided for general background information and is not intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.